Inflammation is a key component of arterial injury, with VSMC proliferation and neointimal
formation serving as the final outcomes of this process. However, the acute events
transpiring immediately after arterial injury that establish the blueprint for this inflammatory
program are largely unknown. We therefore studied these events in mice and found that
immediately following arterial injury, medial VSMCs upregulated Rantes in an acute manner
dependent on Stat3 and NF-κB (p65 subunit). This led to early T cell and macrophage …

Inflammation is a key component of arterial injury, with vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC)
proliferation and neointimal formation the final outcome of this process. However, the acute
events that establish the blueprint for this vascular inflammatory response are incompletely
understood. To address this deficiency we examined events immediately after femoral artery
wire injury in mice and identified a marked acute recruitment of macrophages and T cells,
with vessel-associated CD3+ T cells increasing~ 20-fold within 1 day of injury …